Children’s Partnership (2003)

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The Children’s Partnership is a six-year, federally funded demonstration project in Travis County. The Partnership offers individualized, family-centered, culturally competent, community-based services for children and adolescents identified as seriously emotionally disturbed. The project specifically targets families with multi-challenged children at risk of or already living in residential placements, who require highly structured, coordinated community care to reduce their lengths of stay in hospitals or other institutions. These families are engaged at all levels in assisting with the evaluation, including data collection.

The Children’s Partnership involves a local evaluation of integrated services in Travis County in conjunction with a large scale, national evaluation of children’s mental health initiatives. The three main components of the evaluation are: (a) systems change, (b) costs/services, and (c) child and family outcomes. Outcome data from Travis County will inform the State’s efforts, funded through the Texas Integrated Funding Initiative, to expand the service coordination system to four additional sites throughout Texas.